


24-Pack Card and Sticker Valentine Kits

by stitchy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Biographical, Closeted Character, Eddie Lives don't even trip, Fix-It, Fluff, Growing Up, Humor, Inter-Canon, M/M, POV Richie Tozier, Pining, Pre-Canon, Theatre Kid Richie, Valentine's Day, Winter Olympics, jock Eddie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22424074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: Eddie grabs a bottle of Elmer’s and starts tracing each letter with glue. There’s a dopey, sort of proud feeling in Richie, watching him carefully craft the letters of his name. More than when he spells outBecause(which really sucked for Eddie) orBastard(a recently learned swear.) He feels all warm and fuzzy because it’shimthat Eddie chose to make his spare valentine for, since he didn’t have a dad and a mom. He could of picked Bill or Stanley, gnashing away on the other side of the table with their pinking shears, or the teacher- but he pickedRichie.Valentine’s Day, 1984 - 2020
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, minor Richie Tozier/OMC - Relationship
Comments: 147
Kudos: 709





	24-Pack Card and Sticker Valentine Kits

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: In 2006 there’s some aftermath of violence and fleeting mention of sexual assault (none that occurs, though!) and suicide ideation. There’s also a pet introduced in the 90s, and this fic ends in 2020, so, you do the math. I promise I am as gentle but realistic a storyteller as I can be on both accounts.

-1984-

It’s a school day, despite the winter weather’s best efforts. There’s something kind of magic about a day that almost _ought_ to be a snow day. Like any minute, the principal will come over the loudspeaker and admit that it was time to call it quits. Everyone go home early! Candy rains from the ceiling and a moose pokes its head in through the window to offer everyone a ride since the buses are stuck in the ice. Wrapped in snow, everything and everyone is shivery and fresh and a little extra giggly in the hope that maybe today school doesn’t actually matter. Not Richie, though. He likes school days fine because he’s good at them. And he likes Tuesday especially, because that’s the day when Mr. Wright’s second grade class and Miss Leeds’ have art together, and all his best friends are there.

“Richie, spell me your name,” Eddie demands, bowed low over his red construction paper. He’s got the R and I, but he’s tapping with his pencil as he debates with himself if that looks okay. Not that Richie would ever hold it against him if he got it wrong. Richie’s really good at learning words, but not everyone is. Eddie has a hard enough time remembering to draw the D’s in his own name the right way around. He’s not slow or anything (he’s the quickest boy Richie knows, talking, walking, making friends with weirdos that turn out to be really cool) but he’s got trouble with words coming out all wrong when he’s putting them on paper. He says it’s like being stuck watching a slo-mo replay in real life, where a boxer is dodging right when you already _know_ they need to go left, and even though they can hear you shouting _You idiot, its a B!_ and there’s all the time in the world, they get smashed in the face with the ball. Okay, maybe that’s crossing boxing and football, it’s Eddie’s way of explaining it, not his- but it sounds like mixed up, frustrating stuff. So- whatever Eddie asks, Richie spells. Because whatever the sports analogy, he’s on Eddie’s team. (Especially on Monday, Wednesday, Friday gym days.) 

“R-I-C-H-I-E,” he offers.

“No, not like that.” Eddie squints at his writing. “The long way. It’s fancier.”

“Why, Edward! How _formal_ ,” Richie says with the twang of a Clampett. He slowly spells out ‘Richard’ for Eddie, who confronts that final D with determination and the tip of his tongue stuck out between his teeth.

Since everyone was given enough frilly paper doilies to make two, Eddie switches to his other valentine and sketches out ‘Mom’. With the letters spaced out as good as he’s gonna get them, he grabs a bottle of Elmer’s and starts tracing each in a line of glue. There’s a dopey, sort of proud feeling in Richie, watching him carefully craft the letters of his name. More than when he spells out _Because_ (a word which really sucked for Eddie) or _Bastard_ (a recently learned swear.) He feels all warm and fuzzy because it’s _him_ that Eddie chose to make his spare valentine for, since he didn’t have a dad and a mom. He could of picked Bill or Stanley, gnashing away on the other side of the table with their pinking shears, or Mrs. Hoch, the teacher- but he picked _Richie_.

RICHARD, dolloped in glue. RICHARD, sprinkled with sparkly purple glitter. Eddie picks up the valentine and shakes the paper a little, so all the sticky lines get covered, then pours the rest back into the old coffee canister from whence it came. At the end of the school day, Mrs. Hoch drops off the dried valentines to Miss Leeds’ classroom and Eddie presents it to him while they’re packing up.

“A gen-u-ine Kaspbrak,” Richie marvels, miming a magnifying glass at it. “I gotta put this thing someplace safe! It’ll be worth a million when you’re famous.”

Behind them, Stuart O'Donoghue snickers into his cubby, and _not_ like he’s enjoying Richie’s version of a stuffy art critic. Who knows what the heck his problem is?

“You can’t sell it-”

“You’re right, I gotta get you to sign it, first-”

Eddie rolls his eyes at Richie with a smile. “It’s only for you. Who else would want your dumb name?”

Holding the valentine- _only_ _for me-_ in his hands, Richie thinks he’d change his name to whatever Eddie would give him.

He does keep it safe. He stashes it in the box under his bed, where he keeps sneezing powder from the joke shop that his mother doesn’t approve of, and his favorite mint condition figurine that’s too special to be on display, and birthday money. It’s the first valentine he ever got at school that wasn’t just because the teacher made them give them out to everyone, and it’s from _Eddie_.

-1988-

Richie’s mom has always loved dance. For as long as Richie can remember, she’d scoop him up and spin him around to whatever music was playing at the drop of a hat, until he was too big to lift. Then she taught him to stand on her toes so they could slide around the kitchen in a waltz. Of course, he was at the age now where he had to put up token resistance to maternal affection, but that never stopped Mom from coming into his room while he had the radio playing and try to get him to ‘boogie’. If Dad hadn’t put his foot down, she probably would have taken the whole family to see _Dirty Dancing_ like she did every other dance movie, or one of his sister’s recitals. So of course, because Mom loves all forms of dance, there’s a Tozier household mandate to watch the ice dancing at the Calgary Olympics. _And_ a certain leniency given to those who are discovered speed skating in their socks around the hardwood floor of the dining room.

Eddie skids to a halt in front of Richie, so as not to collide with Mrs. Tozier as she steps into the room, but it turns into a three car pile up, anyway.

“Guys,” she oophs, ruffling their hair. “If you’re gonna go for the gold, do it in the kitchen where you won’t put your heads through the china cabinet.”

“Sorry, Mrs. T!”

Richie shuffles along, waving his arms balletically to the gentle music coming from the TV. “Sorry, Mom!”

He twirls through to the kitchen, where Eddie is pulling his socks back up for peak performance. He’s got his slacks tucked in at the bottom and kind of a baggy, long sleeved shirt, so he looks a bit like the real thing when he stands upright again, planting his fists on his hips and popping a knee.

Richie cups his hands. “Represhenting the United Shtates, in the nerd’s- haha _short-_ get it? In the nerd’s _short_ program-”

“Don’t call me a short nerd, you sh-” Eddie catches himself, as Richie’s parents can be heard oohing and ahhing at the TV in the next room. “ _Jerk_.” The scowl on his face is a warning, but it’s also a promise. If Richie keeps pushing, he’ll get it all right.

“Our littlesht shkater yet, _Ednerd Kashhhbrak_!”

Eddie launches himself at Richie, who jumps to the side and clotheslines him around the middle, turning his retaliatory attack into a bear hug. He’s got just enough size on Eddie to pick him up if he can catch him by surprise, but he didn’t, so he only gets Eddie as far up as his tip toes. He tries to turn them on the spot, but Eddie fights back.

“Stop kicking me!” 

“Lemme go you turd! It’s my turn!”

“But I wanna do a lift!”

Eddie squirms indignantly. “Then do it _right_! You’re squeezing my guts out!”

“This is the Olympics! No pain, no gain!”

But Richie lets him go and bends his knees for another, more coordinated attempt.

Eddie counts down. “Three. Two. One!” Then he hops and pushes off Richie’s shoulders for a boost. It works much better this way, and the judge from France scores them a ten before Richie has to stop spinning them around or else lose his balance.

“Zis iz the mozt remarkable skating we ‘av seen ‘ere at Calgareee,” Richie wheezes as Eddie slithers back down. He keeps hanging on to Richie as he giggles triumphantly.

“What about the Germans?”

“Ve avard... _Nien_ points.”

Eddie huffs and stamps a socked foot on the linoleum. “Only nine?!”

“Each!” Richie waves his hands placatingly and backs up against the counter. “Now, I’ll get outta your way. This was supposed to be _your_ turn,” he admits.

Eddie gets a devilish look. “It’s a pair skate now, obviously. We both score. We’ll get double the points on those other nerds!”

“Zat’s cheating!” the French protest.

Eddie grabs Richie’s hands and tows him back into the middle of the floor. “Who’s gonna stop us?” Eddie grins. “The stupid Mounties?”

The other competitors won’t stand a snowball's chance in hell!

-1990-

Richie takes his free period in the library, where everyone else elbows their way to the computers for a go at _Oregon Trail_ or _Math Munchers_. He snags a neglected word processor. He wouldn’t want his handwriting to be recognized. It would be recognized, he knows, because the Losers pass each other plenty of notes. They know each other inside and out. They know Stan’s loopy S’s from Ben’s zigzaggy ones, and how Eddie has taken to using a smaller sized capital R instead of any lowercase ones to distinguish them from his N’s and V’s. Any one of them would see Richie’s spiky letters and know right away who the author was.

He has to be careful how he words it. He can’t sound too much like himself, but he doesn’t want to sound like some girl, or a random acquaintance signing a yearbook out of obligation either. It has to be personal. Eddie has to _believe it_ when it says all the things he deserves to hear but that Richie is too chickenshit to utter out loud. He is perfect and fascinating and adorable and not just ‘in a cute way’ that makes him mad when people say, but adorable meaning that he is _adored_. Fuck what his mom says, or the rumors the remainder of Bowers’ gang spread, or the nightmares that they confide in each other.

On his way to Spanish, Richie dodges between couples who somehow managed to make it past the secret admirer phase. How do they _do_ that? They lean against the bulletin boards, decorated with hearts and doves and flyers for the candy-gram sale and make disgusting goo goo eyes at each other and plans to suck face somewhere after school. He drops his note into the vent of Eddie’s locker, then ducks around the corner before anyone can see him.

A few periods later, Eddie reports to the group about the giggling pack of girls who cornered him after math class while Alicia forced a personalized chocolate on him, but he doesn’t say anything about the letter.

“I’m off sugar for track, if any of you guys want.”

“Nasty,” Richie yucks, as Eddie offers the bar up for grabs. “If you’re gonna say it with chocolate, at least leave nougat out of it.”

As he watches Bill and Stan split it, he can’t help but feel a mixture of shame and relief.

It’s not like he really wanted Eddie to subject his note to the scrutiny of the group, but he had taken it for granted he’d be the only person throwing their hat into the ring. Of course there are other people who see how fantastic Eddie is, vying for his attention and affection. People who are brave enough to show up _in person_ to say it, too.

-1992-

_I start out as a blank page. I could be anything. A story, a list, a recipe for disaster. But you pick me out and bend me how you want, then again, snapping my paperthin spine in half. Like a lamb or a bottle broken on the bow of a ship, I am an offering, splashed in red. With your blackened claw, you carve a name into my heart, and then you plunge me into confinement. It could be for hours or days, and I’d never know- to me it is only ever the day you said it was. You lick your lips like a wolf as you seal me away. Am I locked up, only to be devoured? Just end it now! I wait, and I wait. I think the worst has passed, enveloped in dark. Too dark to see the glint of the knife. It slides in without warning, slipping and ripping, and-_

“Ohhh,” says Bill. “I like this. W-wish I’d thought of making it a horror story.”

Richie takes his Creative Writing assignment back with a smirk. It’s no sonnet ( _fuck_ Ben and his iambic pentameter) or hokey Valentine poem like most of their other classmates. Their teacher usually eats it up when he works around the instructions, so he’s sure to get a bomb ass grade.

“You snooze you lose!” Richie wrinkles his nose at Bill.

“Yeah,” Bill shakes his head. “Yeah. Hey! Did you find a date for the movies tonight, or what?”

Bill’s been getting more and more into girls, but until he’s seventeen his parents won’t let him date unless it’s a group thing, so anytime there’s a girl he likes, he’s always after the Losers to rustle up their own. It’s not much of a hardship to tag along stag, in the end, but first they always have to go through this fucking charade. There’s probably someone Richie could get to come along if he actually asked, but he’s committed to repping the single life, lest Eddie feel peer pressured by most of the other guys dating- so he always feeds Bill some bullshit about getting turned down.

“If your parents think my presence is gonna hold you back from trying to tonsil hockey Melissa all the way to the Stanley Cup then they have not been paying attention when I constantly beg, _beg_ you on my fucking hands and knees not to talk with your mouth full.” Richie clasps his hands in martyrdom. “I can’t make you do _anything_.”

Bill sighs. “So did you ask anyone, or-”

“Well, I can always ask Mrs. K.”

“She _would_ be able to drive us,” Bill jokes back. As it is, they’ll have to beg rides off the Denbroughs or Richie’s sister.

Richie slings his arm around Bill’s shoulders and marches them down the hall. “I’m afraid I take my duty as a human chastity belt too seriously, Billiam. No one’s pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down.”

This doesn’t seem to disappoint Bill, however. “Then you can go with Stephanie.”

 _Ugh_. Melissa’s best friend. Getting set up was the danger of leaving things to chance. Usually he could find a way to piss off a girl before trailers finished rolling, then glom on to Eddie the rest of the evening, but it’d be nice if he didn’t have to systematically alienate every single one of their classmates with a pair of tits. Some of them were pretty chill! They coulda been friends!

-1993- 

Upside of Richie getting his wisdom teeth out right before Valentine’s Day: Get Out Of Being Nagged By Bill Free Card.

Downside: he can’t have a Twix and all he wants on this whole fucking planet right now is a fucking Twix.

The day after Valentine’s Day, a bunch of the Losers clean out the discounted candy rack at Keene’s and haul it back to their lair in Richie’s basement. They make a pile of it between the two controllers of the Super Nintendo and take turns trouncing each other at _Turtles in Time_ and ragging on Richie for his post-extraction chipmunk cheeks. He experiments with trying to melt a little chocolate on his tongue instead of chewing, but it’s just not worth it.

Everyone else except the admirably disciplined track star Eddie winds up giving themselves a stomach ache. Mike sprawls out on the floor while he tries to keep playing, but Ben gives up entirely, chucking his controller to Eddie and faceplanting into the pile of sleeping bags that are still down here from the last time they went indoor camping. Stan’s already claimed the couch for his recovery, so Richie swoons into Eddie’s cross-legged lap.

“This is how it ends, Eds. Shooting up Hershey’s syrup in the basement.”

With everyone else laid low by their hubris, he must blend right in. Eddie doesn’t point out that he hardly had any candy, he simply adjusts his arm so he can keep playing with Richie’s head pillowed on his thigh.

“If you die, can I have your Wrestle Buddies?”

Mike laughs. “The _dolls_?”

“They’re hilarious!” Eddie defends.

Richie blushes and tries to turtle into his hoodie. “Those were a gift from my grandma, I swear. She still thinks I’m like, eight.”

She was much too conservative to ever imagine how apt the gift of cuddly muscle men might be, but she _might_ have realized he was too old for stuffed animals. Sheesh. 

“You _are_ still eight,” snickers Eddie.

“That’s what makes my passing all the more tragic,” Richie says gloomily.

“R.I.P. Richie! I can’t wait to burn all your shit.”

“Aww, thank you.” He pats Eddie’s knee fondly. “You remembered my preferred funeral arrangements. _Viking_. We really are like an old married couple.”

“Nope,” Eddie smirks as he button mashes. “Forgot all about that. I’m _actually_ trying to erase you from existence. Destroy all the evidence.”

Richie gasps. “Just because you can’t beat my high score fair and square doesn’t mean you have to go fucking pyro about it.”

“It’s not _just_ because you’re fucking freak at this game. If we’re married I get a life insurance payout...”

“Not if I implicate you with my dying breath!”

“Please,” Stan croaks from the couch. “I’m so sick of this. Mike, give Richie the controller so they can fight it out, I don’t wanna know what the alternative is.”

-1994-

It’s a pretty busy night for a Monday, especially right after dinner. Richie spends most of 7-8pm stuck at the register, checking out people whose idea of a date night includes Meg Ryan and a jumbo pack of Twizzlers. He can hardly cross the store to put anything back on the shelf before the vultures descend on him again.

He’d rather them than Pamela Koening, though- who had decided after one of Bill’s fix-ups that Richie was the love of her life. She’s one of those church girls with a purity ring and everything, so he figured he was safe to use her for camouflage for a month or two, maybe get his mom to lend him the car a few times... Then he made the mistake of getting her a thoughtful Christmas present, and one thing lead to another and now _maybe God wouldn’t mind if they did more than kiss!_ This was a nonstarter for Richie. Ever since, he’s worked weekends as an excuse not to see her again. Eventually she’d take the hint, right? She seemed pretty resigned that he didn’t ask about Valentine’s Day, and Ben’s girlfriend said she thought they were already broken up, so maybe they are? He feels like an asshole. She’s a sweet girl, and really smart and good company and all that- like a friend. But he _still_ hasn’t talked to his other friends about his whole deal, and he’s been holding back so long at this point that he just _knows_ if he has to definitively tell her that he’s not into her, he’ll wind up telling her _why_.

When the crowd dies down for the night, he digs into the returns bin so he can get it put away before closing. He checks that all the tapes match the box they’re in and are rewound. Stacks them by genre. Groups the duplicates. Then he gets engrossed in alphabetizing, which is easily his favorite part of this job- other than the pocket money and the free rentals, of course. He’s half way through ordering the comedies when someone knocks _shave and a haircut, two bits_ on the counter behind him.

What’s this snot in a rush for? He only just heard the bell ring over the door!

Richie turns around, still shuffling VHS boxes between hands to look busy- but it’s Eddie. Leaning into the counter, looking windswept and rosy from the cold outside to such a degree of picture-perfection that he could have run in from the last scene of a chick flick. Cue the confessions and the crane shot.

“Hey Tozier. When do you get outta here?”

Richie tosses his boxes aside and leans into the other side of the counter conspiratorially. “Nine. Why, are you casing the joint? The keys to the safe are hanging by the CPR poster. Just make it look like I put up a struggle.”

Eddie laughs. “You’d be the worst fucking guard dog.”

“I could kick your ass! I’d just rather we split the loot and run away together.” Richie raises his eyebrows- _Whaddaya say, Eds?_

He shifts his eyes like he’s considering it and chews his lip. He grins. “Could you even keep up with me?” Eddie leans back and stretches his arms overhead and bounces on his toes, in challenge.

“I’d try,” Richie promises, watching him closely.

And if he couldn’t- if he fell behind, he knows he’d ruin his fucking _life_ for Eddie and say it was all his idea. Whatever the punishment.

“Maybe some other time.” Eddie catches sight of an end-cap full of popcorn. He scouts out a flavor he likes and flips the package onto the counter. “Let’s hang out.”

“On a school night?” Richie whistles. It’s already pretty late. Little bit out of character for Eddie, who already ran a mile or two in the morning by the time Richie was crawling out of bed. 

Eddie shrugs. “Yeah, well- I thought someone should check on you, you sadsack. Heard you broke up with Pam.”

That’s _fantastic_ news. Eddie is usually a few steps removed from the tawdry social goings on of Derry High, being so wrapped up in extracurriculars. If he’s caught wind, then Richie must have successfully shaken her off.

“Yeah,” says Richie, trying not to seem too thrilled. “You know how it is. She’s cool. I just, uhm, wasn’t as serious and she was.” He thinks he’s heard other people say that and not get crap for being The Bad Guy. It sounds more considerate than how things actually played out, but at least at its core, it’s true.

Eddie hums at him with crossed arms. “So then you wouldn’t mind if I asked her out?”

Richie’s stomach lurches and all the blood drains from his face, probably making him look as somber as he’s pretending to be. “Uhhhhh,” he clears his throat. “I mean, if you wanna get your rocks off, she doesn’t put out, if that’s what you’re after. I don’t think she’s really? Your type? She’s not my type. And you and me are kinda like-“

“Holy shit, I’m kidding!” Eddie bursts out laughing. “I have no idea what you were doing with her to begin with.”

 _Nothing_! Richie wants to scream. That was the beauty of it! They were both saving themselves, just for different dudes! Pamela just had to go and screw it all up, lapsing in her devotion. Apparently Jesus Christ himself couldn’t hold a candle to Eddie.

”I don’t know either!” Richie exclaims.

“Okay!” Eddie shouts back.

Richie picks up his stack of comedies again and gets a hold of himself. The last thing he wants to do is make Eddie think he’s hung up about a girl. “I’m really totally cool with it,” he says evenly. “Don’t worry ‘bout little ol’ me.”

“I won’t.” Eddie relaxes. “We could still hang out, though.”

“Then go pick a movie!” squeaks Richie. “I gotta finish this and then count the drawer.”

Somehow, he scored with a shot he didn’t take- just wait until Gretzky hears about this! Richie tries not to overthink the fact that Eddie sought him out upon hearing about his so-called break up. Rushing to tend to his supposedly battered heart. On fucking _Valentine’s Day_. He definitely mediumthinks it, though.

_Maybe...?_

He straightens out the Drama aisle while Eddie picks something out in Action. “Don’t look at me like that!” he whispers at one of the Hepburns, staring out at him in black and white. “I can’t pull that off like you can.”

Even though Eddie starts the car so it’s warm and ready to go by the time Richie locks up, he shivers nervously all the way home.

Mom intercepts them in the kitchen while they’re scrounging up movie snacks. As long as she hears him come home safe at night, she doesn’t care if Richie stays up late or has his friends over. That said, she’s not above snooping.

“Hi, sweetie,” she greets Eddie, waiting by the microwave as the popcorn pops.

“Hey, Mrs. T.”

“Mom, oh my god.”

“What, Richie?”

“He has a _name_.”

“I don’t mind!” Eddie chimes in.

Mom smiles at him adoringly. “Of course he doesn’t.”

Richie scoffs. Eddie won’t let _him_ call him call him endearments, why should someone who’s only put in a fraction of the time get to have all the fun?!

“Goodness, I didn’t mean to make you feel left out _,_ ” Mom teases, coming over to harass Richie. She squeezes his face and plants a kiss on his cheek for good measure. “My handsome man.”

“Ugh.”

Eddie makes kissy faces at him over her shoulder.

 _Eat a dick_ , Richie mouths back.

“So what are you two animals up to?” she asks, eyeing the microwave. “The usual?”

“ _Point Break_ ,” Eddie supplies.

“Swayze, right?” Mom sighs.

Eddie nods. “Your favorite, Mrs. T.”

“They don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” she hums.

“Yuck.” Richie frowns. “Shouldn’t it be date night with Dad? Get outta here you crazy kid. Leave us alone.”

Mom smirks at him before she leaves the kitchen. “It’s fun to make him wait!”

“Mother! Inappropriate!”

Eddie turns red holding in a laugh until she’s out of ear shot. “It’s nice to know you’re capable of being embarrassed,” he tells Richie. “I worry that your brain isn’t connected to the rest of you, sometimes.”

“Laugh it up, fuckface! See if I make you any hot cocoa,” Richie mutters. An empty threat. He pulls down two mugs from the cabinet.

Eddie covers his hand with his own on top of the nearer mug. Forget the chocolate, Richie could melt himself into it. “I’d rather just pass the jar of Fluff back and forth,” says Eddie. “Cut out the middleman.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight, but I’m lovin’ it.” He keeps glancing at Eddie as he switches the mugs for marshmallow and retrieves some spoons. Next thing you know, he’ll want to make some crank calls and leg wrestle.

Eddie’s mouth twitches a little, in a rare moment of pause before a reply. “I dunno. It’s just been a while since we got to do this.” He catches one of Richie’s sidelong looks. “You know. Just us.”

An unformed cheer flutters in Richie’s throat. Maybe ‘ _maybe’_ isn’t so off base.

“Then I guess it’s lucky the rest of our friends are too polite to barge in on me at nine on a Monday,” Richie grins. “Come on. Get the popcorn and let’s go.”

Downstairs, they drag their feet across the carpet as they unfurl a sleeping bag to huddle under, generating some truly epic static shock.

“Shit!” Eddie shakes his hand off.

Richie laughs evilly. “ _That’s_ for egging on my mom.”

“She’s funny!”

Richie shudders and flaps the blanket over them on the couch. “No, she’s gross!”

Eddie gives him an all too-knowing look before he grabs the popcorn. “You of all people should know it's possible to be both.”

“Everything I know about comedy and being gross, I learned from fuckin’ _your_ mom-”

“I fucking hate you.” Eddie chucks a piece of popcorn at his face, but Richie- without really meaning to- manages to catch it in his mouth and it turns into a game.

After a handful of successful shots, Richie grabs the bag to try his luck with Eddie.

“Yeah, right in your mouth!”

“And that’s what I said while fucking _your_ mom!” Eddie snickers and _ba-booms_ his hands. “S’why she calls me sweetie.”

“You’re the literal spawn of Satan.”

God, Richie loves this boy.

Eventually they settle down into eating like normal teenagers, meaning they’ve just about demolished the popcorn by the time Swayze makes his first (unmasked) appearance. Even more deliciously, once they’re done throwing things at each other, Eddie scoots in closer.

“You’ve seen this movie before, right?” He spits a salty kernel back into the empty bag.

“Duh.”

“Stupid question, I know how you are about Keanu.”

Richie pokes Eddie in the dimple. “It’s all about those big brown eyes, Eds!”

Eddie bats his lashes right back at him. That little punk knows exactly how cute he is.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Swear to me you’ll never use your powers for evil.”

“Too late. I’m gonna use ‘em to stick up Blockbuster.”

“My bad, I already agreed to that,” Richie admits.

“It’s a slippery slope from there, Richie. Next thing you know, I’m robbing banks dressed as the fucking Easter bunny.”

“They wouldn’t see your eyes in a mask, dipshit!” Richie giggles as he unscrews the cap on the Fluff.

“The tellers wouldn’t, but _you_ would. In the getaway car.” 

“Dibs on being a Muppet.”

“You already are.”

“ _Gracias_.” Richie digs into the Fluff, delighted.

Eddie rolls his eyes.

“Mmmfff. Dang, I’m gonna miss this in Chicago. I don't think you can get it there.” Richie sighs, then continues licking his spoon clean.

“I’ll mail you some,” Eddie promises. “If I stay in New England, anyway.”

Eddie is still waiting on acceptance letters to figure out if he’s headed to Michigan (four hours away from Chicago) or Connecticut (fifteen hours away, _not that Richie specifically went to the library to look it up_!). Richie’s been trying to talk his mom into selling him the second car when he goes to college, either way.

“Gimme,” Eddie grabs for the jar.

Richie tries to find the second spoon for him, but comes up empty. “I think I lost one... It’s... in the asscrack of the couch,” he grits, trying to wriggle his hand through, but he can’t feel it.

“Who cares?” Without hesitation, Eddie yoinks Richie’s spoon right out of his hand.

“Thief, thief!” Richie cries in his pearl-clutchingest Voice. “Your life of crime is already starting!”

Not that Richie objects to a little mingling of mouths! He just didn’t think Eddie would be the one starting it. He tries not to stare while Eddie has his wicked way with a scoop of marshmallow, but how many more opportunities will Richie have to soak him up before they get separated? It’s the last semester of school. In twelve years, they haven’t gone without seeing each other for more than- what? Three weeks?

“We’re gonna visit each other, too, right?” Richie asks. “I mean, a care package full of handpicked Eddie goods would be awesome, and all, but...”

What if Richie can’t get a car? What if their schools’ holiday breaks don’t line up, or Eddie (rightfully) doesn’t want to stay with his mom in Derry- so they don’t see each other in summer, either? It terrifies him to think that Derry is the glue keeping them together. They can’t be what he wants them to be here, but would Eddie come all the way out to Chicago to see him? Can they have a clandestine meeting the middle, in whatever seedy motel their broke college asses can afford? 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, like it's obvious. But it’s not.

“You can’t just say that Eddie.” Richie can’t help that his voice cracks a little. “You have to mean it.”

“Richie.” Eddie drops the spoon back in the jar and looks at him directly. “I’m not gonna let you ignore me away like one of your dumb girlfriends.”

Richie swallows the lump in his throat and nods.

They pass the Fluff back and forth a few more times and the movie takes a turn for the romantic. If he could just fucking sack up, that could be them, he thinks. If he squints at Keanu kissing Lori Petty, flat as her surfboard and short haired-

“I wanna go to the beach,” Eddie pouts.

“We can go to the beach,” Richie says automatically, despite a mouthful of Fluff. It should probably be his last one, his stomach feels weird. Could just be from being massively into Eddie, alone with him, late at night, thinking about what it'd be like to- “As soon as its not fucking arctic,” he amends.

“Not here. _There_. Like when we get outta Derry, we can go.”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want, Eds.”

Richie smiles at the movie. The crashing waves. The sandy bonfires. California’s a hell of a long way away, but if there's someplace Eddie wants to be with him, that’s where Richie will go.

As the on-screen tension ratchets up, Eddie shrinks deeper into their sleeping bag blanket. When Johnny Utah’s face nearly goes through a lawnmower, he’s stuck to Richie’s side like velcro, clutching at his arm.

“I woulda told you to rent _Chariots of Fire_ for the fiftieth time if I knew this was gonna freak you out so bad, cupcake!” He puts Eddie in a headlock that is met with next to no resistance. He must be bushed. 

“Fuck you, I’m-“ Eddie yawns twice in a row and lets himself be draped along top of Richie as he tips them over and stretches his lanky legs down the couch. “I’m ffffine.”

Richie loosens his grip and just pats his shoulder. Eddie, soft and sweet, shuts his eyes. It’s been a few years since they’ve snuggled up like this and Richie has missed it. “Yeah, you’re fine. You’re yawning though.”

“Yeah? Shuttup.”

Adorable as a sleepy Eddie is, as badly as he wants to keep him here in his arms, Richie knows he’ll catch hell tomorrow if Eddie forgets morning practice or something. “Do you want me to drive you home?” he asks quietly. Maybe he won’t hear. Maybe he won’t leave. 

Eddie just shakes his head against Richie’s chest and tugs the blanket tighter around them, burrowing. He stuffs a corner of it under his cheek to make the angle of his neck more comfortable. Hopefully it serves to muffle the hammering of Richie’s heart a bit, too.

“Do you wanna stay over?”

“Shh. I’m sleeping on you,” Eddie mumbles.

“Okay.”

Richie feels around for the remote so he can turn the volume down, doing his best not to disturb the cozy cradle of their bodies. He wraps his arms over Eddie, already breathing deeply.

“G’night, Eddie.”

“Mmmnight, Rich. Go to sleep.”

Fat chance, Richie thinks, watching Eddie drift off. No way he’s missing out on this.

-1995-

First semester of college goes great. Richie KO’s liberal arts requirements like a champ, goes to parties where they drink something other than Natty Light, and doesn’t think about Derry for months. For Christmas break, empty-nesters Mom and Dad surprise him with a family trip to Cancun to cap it all off. _Wonderful_. Richie Tozier, college-man, has it made in the palm treed shade.

Then he gets back to Chicago for the spring semester and everything falls to shit. He’s got a sunburn, and no answer for when his Child Psych 101 professor asks the room full of students what interested them in the major.

_I’m interested in this field because when I was a child my parents divorced/died/divorced/divorced/divorced/abused me/divorced._

So, what’s your problem, Tozier?

And Richie can’t for the life of him remember why he’s here. Like, okay! Maybe there’s a little strain with his parents like there is with any two groups of people with a generational gap, but these kids have trauma and shit and he’s just sitting there like, _I’m fucked up for literally no reason! Please stop making me examine this!_ But the powers that be won’t let him switch his major until next year, so he’s gotta just ride it out.

Then his roommate, who was otherwise a likable dude, walks in him jerking off to a WWF magazine. Survivable! Maybe he didn’t notice the reading material, Richie tells himself. There were other things on the bed! Maybe he could get away with claiming a strange attraction to bananas or electronic black jack. Then a week later, his RA pulls him aside and tells him his roommate put in a complaint. That when he fell asleep on top of the covers in his boxers the other day, he thinks Richie must have perved on him. That he was trying to get a transfer to another dorm room, but they were full up, so Richie better set things ‘straight’.

So naturally Richie Tozier, college-man, takes down his Bowie poster and anything else remotely homoerotic from his side of the room, and then rather than actually bring it up with his roommate, spends all the time he possibly can _not_ in the dorm.

This particular day, he hauls his books and a rainforest’s worth of photocopies down to the dining hall, and works on a paper on multiple intelligences theory. When he’s at the self-serve waffle iron for a break between his first and second draft, he runs into Jessica Hen-something. She’s from the movement class he’s taking for his theater minor, and no one really goes by last names in that department, not even the teachers. But they’re working on a piece with two other kids for Alexander Technique, so they’re kind of friends. It doesn’t alarm him when she asks if he wants to catch a movie, at least.

He thinks about saying yes, and letting her drag him to _Before Sunrise_ , and then taking her back up to his dorm where his dumbfuck roommate can see her in her girly pink dress and her too-much silverywhite eye shadow. He thinks he could stand to make out with her long enough to get caught, if it meant not having to look over his shoulder, waiting for a beating until May. But he knows what will really happen, because it's already happened with the other three girls he’s attempted to be friends with.

They’ll go to the movie and he’ll angle her at the box office ahead of him to indicate that he’s not paying. This is not a date. She’ll just think he’s a broke college kid and happily go dutch. He’ll offer her popcorn because his eyes are always bigger than his stomach, and she’ll offer him some candy and they’ll joke about the movie and walk back to campus together, and they’ll run into someone they know smoking on the benches outside the dorm, and Richie will smoke so she won’t want to kiss him and the next time they hang out he might not have the opportunity for a literal smokescreen and he’ll have to tell her he doesn’t like her _like that_ and her feelings will be hurt and he’ll be down a friend. Again.

-1997-

Waiting tables might be cliché for a theater major, but then so many things are. Black turtlenecks. Superstitions. Being a fucking closetcase. At least it keeps him out of the way while his roommates battle royal over which of them gets to use the apartment for their date.

He’s got a message from his mom waiting for him by the telephone when he finally gets in at night. They’re selling the house and moving closer to his sister in New Jersey, so he should make a list of stuff from his old room that he wants before it gets thrown out.

Richie rips a page out of one of his notebooks and stares at it until midnight, unable to think of anything he misses from Derry besides his summer clothes.

-1998-

Richie waits brunch for a change of pace. Fewer candles and engagements than dinner. Fewer tips, too, which isn’t great, but spotting what he’s pretty sure is an old gay couple holding hands across the table depresses him even more. He’s twenty-one now, nearly done with his degree, and he can do just about everything except rent a car or run for higher office.

(Or hold hands with someone at dinner.)

At the end of his shift, he figures he’ll go home and either catch up on the Nagano Olympics until a roommate kicks him out of the living room, or he kills a six pack and stumbles off to bed of his own volition.

Nick, another one of the servers, is putting on his coat at the same time as Richie, so he tries to look very concerned with checking the updated schedule before he leaves. Nick is always cornering people and begging them to come to an open mic, and Richie is sick to the back teeth of hackysacking dudes and their acoustic guitars covering Eric Clapton.

“Heading over to the club,” Nick nods, though Richie hasn’t said a word, hasn’t so much as breathed in his direction. “Just gotta pick up my guitar.”

“Break a leg, dude.”

He shouldn’t have engaged, because now Nick tastes blood in the water. “You might like it, you know. You’re an artsy guy. The music’s usually pretty good, and sometimes there’s spoken word stuff.”

“Like a poetry slam?” Richie can’t help himself. “Do they know there’s a new fucking millennium coming, or has everybody there been baked since the Cold War started?”

Nick laughs. “Maybe, man. The bar’s got a heavy pour though, and you get a free drink ticket if you perform.”

“I don’t suppose they take kazoo acts or interpretive dance?”

Richie has a one man impression of _Rocky IV_ as a tap dance-off that slays.

“They do have comedians,” Nick shrugs.

Hmm.

-1999-

Richie creeps back into the apartment after his now-traditional Valentine’s Day shift. If he opens the door to a certain angle and speed walks down the hall to his room, he won’t have to see anything lurid that his roommate Boone might be up to in the common area. Much to his surprise, instead of mood lighting, every single dimmer in the place is on full blast, and all the commotion is coming from the bathroom.

“C’mere kitty kitty kitty! Don’t you want a treat?”

 _What fresh hell is this?_ If Boone and Natalie wanna break out the fetish gear, they could at least confine it to Boone’s room, or the living room, where Richie rarely hangs out. Richie _likes_ the bathroom. It’s retro without being grungy and it’s the one room with a functioning lock and a view of the skyline instead of the underside of the L. He doesn’t wanna think of them choking each other with a leash every time he’s trying to unwind with a shower beer. Is nothing sacred?

But he doesn’t hear Natalie’s voice. Instead, there’s a tiny, definitely non-human mewwing.

Richie preemptively frowns and stalks his way to the bathroom door. Boone’s grubby feet stick out of the frame as he kneels on the floor, trying to coax a black ball of fur out from between the wall and the sink.

“Uh, what the fuck is this?” asks Richie.

Boone tries to grab for the cat, but it hisses. “It’s a kitten.”

“I swear to god, Boone, I had an entire bowl of bouillabaisse spilled down my pants I am in no fucking mood.”

As Boone attempts to draw the cat out again, it backs its little rump up to the wall, forcing its hind legs off the floor. Every single one of its little hairs stands on end.

“It obviously doesn’t want you to touch it,” says Richie. “Speaking of people who don’t wanna touch you, where the fuck is Natalie? Isn’t she supposed to be over? I took a shift tonight specifically to give you space.”

That girl’s got as good a head on her shoulders as is possible for someone willing to date Boone. Surely she’ll put a lid on this and Richie can return to his busy schedule of being comatose between shifts and gigs.

Boone sits back on his heels, momentarily defeated. “Uhh, she dumped me. Said I was- well. That it was too much that I bought her a cat.”

Richie throws his hands into the air then claps them back to his side. “Yeah, that’s fucking inconsiderate as shit,” he spits. “So what? Now we’re stuck with a fucking cat? Does our deposit cover pets? Did you buy litter or food? Why can’t _I_ dump you!?”

Usually Richie’s complaints fall on deaf ears, but for once Boone shrinks, chastened. “No... I’ll take it back tomorrow.”

 _Okay_ , _okay_. It’s probably way harsh to imply you’re gonna evict your roommate the same night he gets dumped. Richie sighs and rubs his eyes under his glasses. “Whatever man, can you just? Get outta here? If I can grab a shower, maybe I won’t take the TV and bolt in the night.”

“But-” Boone gets to his feet and makes one last swipe from above into the crevice. “He’s still stuck in here.”

Famously, cats are not interested in invading wet showers, so Richie’s willing to chance it. “It’s fine, Boone. Just get lost so I can show this cat my schlong, already. Establish dominance.”

As soon as the door is shut behind him, Richie runs the shower and shucks his fish-stinking clothes in a heap. Just ten minutes. Ten minutes of peace between the nonsense of restaurant and roommates, please.

When he gets back out, he towels himself, brushes his teeth, then scoops up his pile of laundry _and_ the cat nesting within.

-2001-

The heat is out in the apartment until the building super gets back to them, and Richie’s preferred movie theater is still running _Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon_ , so he goes for the- uhm, _tenth_ time. He feels a little bad that he can’t smuggle Utah in with him to keep warm, but he does have fur, so hopefully it’s not too bad. No qualms about leaving Boone out in the cold, though. He never comes to Richie’s sets, which is the least he can do, considering he’s late on the utilities every fucking month.

When he gets home, he trades his winter coat for another sweatshirt and flops into bed, where Utah is already camped out in the cocoon Richie built for him before going out. He crams his hands under Utah’s little body for a few minutes and wonders if it’s worth calling the super again to light a fire under his ass. It’s probably past the hour where he’ll go from being the Squeaky Wheel That Gets The Oil to Top Of The Shit List, truth be told.

“We need to get the hell outta here, dude,” he tells Utah. No way he’s leaving his little buddy behind. Utah is technically Boone’s cat, in that he paid for him originally, but Richie’s the one who named him and takes care of him now. “Whaddaya say, kid? Go halfsies on a mother-in-law apartment in the Hills?”

Utah blinks and continues providing his wonderful warming service.

When Richie can feel his fingers again he boots up the computer and pulls out the box of memorabilia he’s been carting around since his parents moved. The jarring sound of the dial-up disturbs Utah enough to seek quieter, greener pastures, so he leaps off the bed and out of the room.

“Not to stereotype, but you’re a total pussy!” Richie calls after him.

His ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper figurine (that still has its original kilt, _thank you_ ) finished auction, so he’ll have to pack that up. It made a pretty penny, despite the box having some inexplicable purple glitter stuck to it. Whatever. More cash for the California fund. He lists a few more items from the box, and by the time he’s reemerged from the rabbit hole that is eBay and crawls into bed, Utah has too. Boone must be crashing with his latest girlfriend until the heat’s back.

“What am I, a fuckin’ rebound?” Richie picks Utah up onto his chest and pulls the covers over them both.

-2002-

It’s a gorgeous 68° when Richie gets out of work in the morning. He doesn’t wait tables anymore, now that he’s made it out to LA. Instead, he does night security at an industrial park- a position he’s pretty sure he was hired for on the merit of being the tallest guy they interviewed who wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed to speak Spanish. The graveyard shift is mostly just checking that doors are locked and watching monitors, but once in awhile he gets to be an asshole on the walkie talkie to someone crossing the channel. It lines up well with nights that he’s got a gig, and the little bit of voice work that he’s been trying to break into. Utah likes it too, since 10 am has always been his preferred bedtime.

He’s sitting in the window watching hummingbirds when Richie comes around the back of the house to the entrance of the garage-turned-studio apartment. His landlady, an eighty year old former chorus girl who bought this bungalow with Ex-husband #3’s money, waves from her crouched position in the garden. She wears heart shaped sunglasses and doesn’t believe in including the internet as a utility, but she’s left him a basket of lemons from her tree by his door. They really liven up a microwaved chicken finger.

“Thanks, Wilma!”

She blows him a kiss off her soily hand. “Happy Valentine’s, sugar!”

“You too,” Richie winks.

Utah waits expectantly just inside the door. If he could ask how Richie’s night was, he would, the little sycophant.

“Mr. Utah,” Richie grovels, with a crisp English butler’s affect. “In honor of this year’s Olympics being held in your namesake state, may I present to you-“

Richie crinkles a plastic shopping bag, immediately piquing the cat’s interest. He pulls out a lacey little catnip heart that says _Meow & You Furever _ on it. “-This token of my esteem.”

While Utah goes nuts on the kitchen floor, Richie calls his dealer for a little herbal refreshment of his own, then conks out until six o’clock. 

He’s making taquitos from a box when Dizzy finally shows up to deliver, except it’s not Dizzy knocking at the door. It’s the cousin he’s never caught the name of. Either way.

“You want a taquito?” he offers, since he hasn’t yet broken himself of New England/Midwestern hospitality.

Dizzy’s cousin lifts both eyebrows, but follows him (all two feet) into the kitchen of his postage stamp sized apartment. “Thanks, bro.”

Utah, still in a haze, looks up at this first stranger Richie has invited into their home in months.

“Dizzy’s cousin,” Richie explains with a pinched mime of a joint.

“Pierce.”

“Pierce, Utah. Utah, Pierce.”

The guy munches on a taquito while Richie flips through his wallet. “Single guy with a cat. What’re you, gay?”

Richie stops, mid billfold and sighs at Utah. “Nah, it’s platonic.”

“It’s cool if you are, man,” says Pierce. “My best friend’s brother is gay.”

And maybe Richie’s a little lonely, and maybe it’s been awhile. He didn’t like to bring anyone home when he had roommates, but now it’s only him. The hypothetical concept that he could have unnoticed sex in his own damn apartment had sort of escaped him until this very moment, so-

“Uhm. You could, like. Introduce us sometime.” He grimaces, in case this is way off base. Even if it’s not, is your dealer’s cousin’s friend’s brother really relationship material?

-2003-

_I’m happy to see that most of you look like you’re not on a date tonight. Shitty date idea. Obviously I don’t have a girlfriend, because I’m here. And you see me. This isn’t a surprise. On the one-to-nine Fellowship of the Fuckable scale, with fucking Orlando Bloom and Viggo at the top, I’m firmly towards the bottom with Gimli and Gandalf. And I’m comfortable with that. We ain’t cute, but we’re generous with our weed, man. My fucking roommate though- he’s on a date tonight and he’s one of those fuckin’ burnt testicles of dude that Saruman gooshes together out of shit and salmonellaed egg yolks or whatever the fuck that was supposed to be. He’s human, I think? Like, geometrically speaking? All the parts are there but trust me, you’d rather fuck Gollum- at least he eats his meat fresh. I’ve seen my roommate go back in on cold cuts that he left out on the counter over the weekend- and before you ask why I didn’t throw them out- I was hoping the bacteria that formed would gain sentience and start paying rent so I can curb this motherfucker. The only reason I haven’t already, is his cat is chill as hell. And better housebroken! Anyway, before his date tonight, (I assume with Helen Keller with a sinus infection) he asks me if he can borrow a shirt..._

“I liked your bit about the Fellowship of the Fuckable,” says some guy at the bar. Dark eyes. Light beard. Collared shirt with rolled sleeves. Richie loves a guy with rolled sleeves- when they look like the harried detective in a black and white movie right before the break in the case.

Richie licks his lips and turns his leaning body toward him. “Yeah, I think it went over better than my material about _The Hours_ would have.”

“I auditioned for that,” the guy laughs.

Not _another_ actor. Richie is firmly of the opinion that one actor per bed is quite enough fakery. But this ain’t Burger King, and you can’t always have it your way.

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe Nicole Kidman beat you out, buddy,” Richie says, letting his eyes roam. Letting it be noticed. He salutes with his drink. “You’ve got a way better nose for it.”

“Thanks.” A wolfish grin in return.

Richie would rather someone connect with his more soul plumbing material, but the pop culture softballs are crowd pleasers. Who is he making jokes about mortality and his Dad’s nosediving health for anyway? The therapist he doesn’t have? _Shuttup Richie, shuttup_.

This guys trying to hit on him and he hasn't got laid on Valentine’s Day in- _ever_. He’s never gotten laid on Valentine’s Day because he’s never hung on to anyone longer than five months except his fucking cat.

“Thompson,” he introduces himself. Richie shakes his hand, and the touch lingers while Thompson considers him with a squint. “Yours isn’t so bad you know. Maybe you’re in the hobbit range. More Sam Gamgee than Gimli.”

Richie touches his nose self consciously. “Ha. Thanks.” He’s always felt like his glasses dominated his features too much for anyone besides his mother to remark on its appeal. “I always liked Sam.”

“He’s a good bro.”

“Maybe there’s a little holdover from Sean Astin bein’ in _The Goonies_ , too?"

“Oh yeah, definitely,” Thompson agrees. “Mikey.”

Richie has a vague memory of something adjacent to a crush on Mikey, with his nervous chatter and overused inhaler. That sweet kind of boyhood longing to stay out late, never stop playing and never be apart from someone. Summers that should last forever.

They shoot the shit for at least an hour first, but Richie knows that at any point he could dangle a _You wanna get the fuck outta here?_ and get a _Let’s go_.

He’s got a bigger apartment now, one with interior walls, so he can’t see the kitchen sink from the bedroom, or vice versa. That’s probably where Utah bolts to when Richie comes crashing in with unexpected company. There’s a couch now, too, so that’s where they start.

“So- that roommate coming back soon, or?”

“That’s all kayfabe, dude,” Richie assures him.

Thompson sucks him off on the couch before they head to the bedroom. A displeased Utah evacuates the area, and Richie knows he won’t come back to bed tonight even if this guy high tails it out of here as soon as he’s got what came (hah) for. Utah’s a jealous little bitch like that, which is a shame. Just from the way Thompson kisses, without tactile awareness of how best to employ a scruffy jaw, he can tell he’s not gonna be the type to get cuddly after, so Richie’s guaranteed to wake up alone.

They fuck and it’s just okay. It’s like the karaoke track version of sex, the beat is there but no ones singing about it. Still, they had a good time at the bar, talking- so Richie asks.

“Don’t suppose you’d wanna do something tomorrow?”

“Ah, uhm.” Thompson frowns while he pulls back on a boot. He stands up straight and looks him in the face, at least. “This is a one time thing,” he winces.

“Oh.” _Of course_. Richie can’t avoid sighing wearily, but he does manage to keep from collapsing back into the pillows to suffocate himself with one of them. 

“Yeah, sorry. It’s- like a holiday gift thing? From my girlfriend.”

Richie clears his throat. “Funny, I don’t remember taking a fucking _booking_.”

“Like a hall pass with a dude,” Thompson keeps explaining, because again, _not very fucking sensitive to the effect he can have_. “Unless you’re into couples, then maybe-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture but I’m a fucking fairy not a unicorn,” Richie snaps. For _this_ , he sexiled his cat.

At least after that, the guy has the good sense to scram.

-2006-

He knows how to pratfall. He knows how to react to the stab of a retractable dagger, dripping in fictitious poison. He even knows how to take a body slam in ring conditions. It’s all just choreography, and he’s always been a natural with movement. But Richie’s only ever learned how to pull his punches, so he didn’t throw any back. It's not the first time he’s been jumped, he can’t remember the first time, really, but for a minute there he was afraid it was the last. Most of the time if a guy is straight, he’s so fucking oblivious to what Richie’s putting out, he can withdraw it just as quickly. Get out of there before the guy knows what (didn’t, _would never_ ) hit him. But that doesn’t always work, and it didn’t work tonight.

Richie washes his face gingerly and puts ice on his busted lip when he gets home. Utah is meowing like a maniac, maybe smelling blood, maybe too lazy to bat food down from the feeder- it can wait a minute. Thinking he’ll turn on the TV, Richie folds himself up on a corner of the couch, with his knees drawn up in front of his vulnerable, vital organs, thankfully unharmed- but he sits staring at the dark screen for at least twenty minutes.

Utah isn’t having it. He jumps onto the arm of the couch and up onto the headrest and butts Richie in the back of the head.

“Alright, alright. Hang on a second, my foot’s asleep,” Richie grunts. “Now it's gonna be up all night!” _Har har._

He makes his usual circuit of Utah’s things, checking his bowls and litter and that the door to his favorite closet wasn’t accidentally closed, but he’s still crying.

“What’re you bellyaching about? You wanna go outside? See that slutty girlcat next door? It’s bobcat o’clock out there, and you ain’t got no balls, dude. What’re you gonna do?”

Utah meows.

Richie hum/sings City High back at him. _What would you do if your son was was at home, meowing all alone on the bedroom floor 'cause he's hungry?_ Failing that, he lets Utah take the lead, thinking that maybe the decoy pop filter he bought for him got stuck under a piece of furniture again. Instead, he leads Richie to the dingy closet where the washer/dryer lives and shows Richie an insect he doesn’t like the look of.

“You never take me anyplace nice anymore,” Richie sighs. It’s just a weevil, so he brushes it into his hand and walks it to the nearest window. He shakes his head at Utah. “You weigh a thousand times what a bug does, do you know that?”

Before he can fall into a stupor on the couch again, Steve calls.

“You took off without the stuff from Jen,” he huffs on the other end.

“Yeah, sorry,” Richie coughs. “I ran into someone I knew?” he says, but the unrehearsed lie sounds thin.

Being his manager, Steve’s the closest thing to a friend Richie has, with a vested interest in his well being. Since he’s invested, he notices. “You sound- are you okay, Rich?”

Richie wills himself to sparkle divertingly. “Golden!” 

“Where are you right now?”

“Home.”

“I can bring it to you, I figured. I’m like, a mile away.”

Ah, fuck. Richie rubs at his tender lip and the bruise that’s forming as they speak. “No! Nah, it can wait- I’m not-”

But Steve either doesn’t take no for an answer, or hangs up before he can hear it.

Richie panics. Not because he thinks Steve will fire him or anything- he’s only an asshole to Richie because that’s the kind of back and forth Richie invites, not because he’s a bigot or whatever. It’s just that before Steve, if it went bad there wasn’t a witness. No one to point out how _good_ things were going, and wouldn’t it all be a _waste_ if this got in the way? Before, there was no one else saying he has to treat this like it’s a fucking job, because it fucking _is_! He’s gonna be turning thirty in a few weeks, and then he’ll have what? Ten years to be as marketable as possible before he’s an old unrelatable has-been? That’s his retirement plan, right there. If he’s not gonna pull up his big girl panties and make _Hey-oh!_ while there’s hay to be made, then he may as well drive his car off a pier and be done with it.

Utah jumps up into his lap to wait with Richie on the couch- a welcome, grounding comfort. He’s generally more of a headbonk and scritches type cat than a petting receptacle, but for once he lets Richie. It's like he knows they both need some smoothing out. He strokes Utah’s smoky fur, head to tail, over and over. He’s accountable to Steve, he thinks, and he’s got Utah, too.

“We wouldn’t want you out on the streets, begging for scraps in a raggedy bowtie, right?”

Utah purrs.

No more, then.

He doesn’t keep Steve waiting when he knocks at the door, he opens it and stares him in the face.

Steve’s eyes go wide, and his jaw drops. “Jesus, Richie, what happened?”

“It’s bobcat o’clock out there and I ain’t got no balls,” Richie says sullenly.

Steve pushes his way in and steers Richie toward the brighter light of the kitchen, down the hall.

Under the interrogative glow of the fluorescents, Richie resigns himself to the truth. “I tried to pick someone up at the bar after the set.”

“I can check with the house receipts if you have a name,” says Steve, scanning the bruising. He hesitates to touch, but Richie can almost feel him x-raying his occipital by eye. “We can put people on a no-fly list for shows in the future, you know.”

Richie clenches his teeth, which makes them ache. “I didn’t get his name.” Stupid. Stupid and careless. Stop listening to your dick and use your fucking brain, Tozier.

“What about the girl you were hitting on?” Steve looks up at him, still hopeful he can sort it out- still not understanding this is bigger than a pissed off bystander boyfriend.

“There’s no girl in this equation, Steve,” Richie sniffs. "Just me and him." A hot tear rolls down the side of his nose.

Steve understands then, but he doesn’t take a step back like Richie expects, or start sputtering _Oh, I didn’t know! I never would have thought you were like that! But you always seemed like a regular, raunchy guy!_

“He didn’t- he only hit you right? Richie?” Steve looks like _he_ might cry. “I’ll drive you to the hospital if-“ he gulps. “You should file a-“

“ _-God_. No,” Richie hiccups. Whatever color was already on his face must be drowning in red now. He wipes the wet off his stinging chin. “He didn’t fucking touch me. Just got the fuckin’ snot beat outta me, s’all.”

“Okay,” Steve says quietly. It’s worse than yelling, because often yelling makes it about the person doing the yelling, and Richie _really_ wishes this wasn’t about him right now.

“-So I’m _never_ doing that again! Not after a show. Not anywhere. Don’t- don’t shit where you eat, right?”

“Richie-“

“It’s not worth it,” Richie insists with a choke. “It’s not!”

Steve looks around the kitchen and pulls a napkin off the paper towel roll to give him. Richie blots his stupid, busted face.

“Maybe not picking people up at work is a good idea, but you can’t, like. Not have a life.”

“Are you gay?” Richie asks sharply.

“No.”

“Then managing my love life is out of your expertise. Just take care of the act.” Richie glares over his napkin.

“Are you gonna change your act?” Steve asks and then immediately palms his forehead. “That’s dumb. Why would you? I mean...?”

Yeah, they both know his persona rolls with an aggressively heterosexual momentum, and there are no out male comedians who are American household names. Maybe in the UK there’d be more of an audience for it, but here it's all red meat and repression.

“Look,” Richie sighs. It’s not like he hasn’t ever thought about it, but he knows he’s not cut out to be a crusader. He’s here to make weird noises and puns and dick jokes and get paid doing it. “Ellen is Ellen because she’s like, a fucking role model. She never did coke off some guy’s piano to get a fucking Zune commercial! They don’t just hand out Pixar fish to-“

“ _-Well_ ,” Steve interjects. “Fucking Tim Allen.”

“-the Tool Man is not my template for success, here, Jesus fu-uuhHhh?-king Christ!” 

Steve snorts a laugh, then Richie laughs, too. A little hysterical, but it doesn’t turn into a sob.

“What a dickhole,” Richie crabs. “Buzz fucking Lightyear.”

"I'm just saying there are worse skeletons." Steve ventures a smile. “You want a Pixar job? I’ll get you a Pixar job.”

Richie shrugs. Sounds like a long shot. 

Utah jumps up onto the kitchen counter behind him and begs for attention from anyone who will give it.

“You’re gonna be okay, Rich,” says Steve, tentatively taking pity on Utah with an ear scratch. “You’re a cockroach.”

“Gee, that’s swell, mister. Uhthankya.”

“And you were really good tonight,” Steve adds, genuinely. “You deserve to celebrate, so like. I don’t know- order a cookie pizza or something.”

Richie takes a moment to check in with his emotional sweet tooth. “Is it sad that all I want is a three dollar Domino’s lava cake right now?”

“It’s on me,” Steve says automatically.

“Big spender.”

Steve rolls his eyes at Richie. “I’ll _bill_ you.”

“Ehh, that’s more like it.” Richie swings an arm to pat Steve’s shoulder. He’s a good guy, and not even ‘deep down’ like Richie hopes _he_ is, just- on top of it all. “Thanks, man.”

Steve pulls out his cellphone, then pauses, looking at Richie as cautiously as he just did reaching out to Utah. “Can I give you a hug?” Steve asks.

“Ugh, chicks,” Richie groans. “Bring it in,” he motions, lifting his arms. Steve claps him around the back. “Thanks again.”

“No problem.”

An hour later, Richie can’t sleep, but he’s got his lava cake, he’s got Utah, and he’s on his way to beating _Twilight Princess_ for the third time. Maybe it is sad, but maybe in ten years he can joke about it, like Boone’s foot funk and Wilma’s heart attack. Tragedy plus time, right?

-2007-

Red shirt, green, green, orange. Is that teal? He doesn’t fucking know. He likes it, so he adds it to his armful.

Richie has a taped show tonight and he’s been so busy lately, it's easier just to shop for something fresh than it is to do laundry or locate the lint roller. He piles it all up on top of the jacket he saw in the window. Finds another jacket that fits so nice, he grabs two. When the cashier rings him up he realizes he’s at the point where he’s stopped checking the price on clothes. He can probably quit the ‘day’ job, then.

-2009-

He’s seeing a therapist. Well. A massage therapist.

_Lame joke._

It’s the first time since Wilma’s that he’s called someone his boyfriend (internally, at least), but probably not for much longer. They keep having the same fight, over and over.

The plan was to stay in and cook.

“I’ve been pampering people all day,” Greg groans. “ _My_ turn. Let’s go out.”

Richie foresaw this. “I’ve got a res for Niccolo.”

“What about Capuano’s?”

“It’ll be swamped! No way we get in.”

Greg shuts the fridge. “We can sit at the bar for an hour, it won’t kill us.”

“C’mon. You know their mixed drinks are shit.”

No argument about that, at least. “They do the best eggplant, though,” Greg tries to bargain.

“We’ll get right in at Niccolo...”

“That place is a pit.”

“The food’s good!”

Finally, Greg emerges from the kitchen to stand before Richie with an oft repeated line. “It’s not a ‘date’ place, Richie.” _Especially not for Valentine’s Day_ , goes unspoken.

What defines a date and romance is a sticking point for Greg. He’s big on _atmosphere_. He doesn’t live with Richie, but he still fills his apartment with candles and homey touches and likes to have music playing in another room when they have sex, but not _in_ the room- because somehow there’s a difference. 

The thing is, Capuano’s has lots of windows. It’s airy. There’s a patio and flowers. People come and go, and more often than not, Richie gets _recognized_. He doesn’t have that problem at Niccolo, where it’s dim and so warren-like they may as well save on overhead and operate out of an abandoned bomb shelter.

Richie backs off like this isn’t Capuano’s vs. Niccolo, or Greg vs. Richie- it’s a wide world and there are so many options! They could still not fight about this! He reaches out a hand to try and draw Greg into his lap on the couch. “ _Anywhere_ I go with you is a date place, babe.”

“Anywhere but somewhere people could _see_ us,” Greg points out. He doesn’t budge.

“Greg.”

“What if I promise to look like I’m having _such_ a terrible time, I can’t possibly be in love with you?”

The look on his face, like it would be a _relief_ to love him less makes Richie’s stomach hurt.

“Tomorrow,” he offers. “Niccolo tonight, then Capuano’s tomorrow.”

Greg heads back into the kitchen. “I’ll be upset tomorrow, too.”

-2011-

7am would usually be way too early on a Monday morning for Richie, but he’s never done press for something this big before, so he’s buzzing. No caffeine required.

“What did you have for breakfast?” the interviewer asks, to check the mic.

“Blackberry pancakes,” Richie tells her. Jackie?- he thinks? There were six people introduced to him simultaneously and he lost track.

“Like Bandy!”

Bandy is the raccoon he voiced in _Ratatouille 2_. Bandy is a dessert chef, and particularly enjoys a sticky berry drizzle, exacerbating his struggle with OCD. Get it? Because raccoons look like they wash their hands when they rinse food, and boy wouldn’t you know it! The hack screenwriter plucked every single low hanging joke he could find on that particular fruit tree!

“Where the similarities begin and end!” Richie claims, pulling that fake-snort-in-your-hand-then-comb-it-through-your-hair move.

Jackie chuckles. “You don’t mind getting messy?”

“Heck no,” says PG rated Richie. “Let’s get our hands dirty, what’ve you got?”

“Well it’s Valentine’s Day so the first question is-“

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Jackie.” _Ah!_ He shouldn’t interrupt. Steve told him not to interrupt. Nerves, and maybe too many pancakes.

“Thank you, you too!” Jackie tilts her head with a grateful smile and then soldiers on, because luckily, Richie’s the only junket virgin here- “What would be your ideal Valentine’s Day date?”

PG Richie is somehow more prepared for this than XXX No Holds Barred Richie.

“If I’m honest? Usually me and my cat Utah split a pizza and watch figure skating, if it’s an Olympic year. It’s very romantic.”

Jackie awws at that. “ _Can_ cats and raccoons be friends?”

“Yeah, but they shouldn’t start a band together,” Richie warns.

He has a follow up joke about trash can drums, but Jackie barrels past the opportunity. “You know, I heard a rumor that you and Patton rewrote a Miley Cyrus song-“

“Oh, yeah that did happen!”

Jackie gives him a daring look. “You wanna break us off a piece?”

Richie _mi mi mis_ for show, but there’s no way he’s gonna get his voice there right now. “Actually, I had just had swine flu when we recorded, so I was way more gravelly. If they ever want Bandy in a third movie, I’ll have to start licking elevator buttons and cross my fingers.”

Jackie looks simultaneously disgusted and delighted that she’s not on camera.

-2012-

Ever since Richie stopped working security his devotion to his WoW party has slipped. He still plays on the Australian servers, which used to hit peak hours when he did, but now he only really parties with the other interloping Americans. Sometimes they’ll do smaller raids while the rest of the crew is asleep, but mostly they peel off to play other games and hang out in Ventrilo and talk. There’s one guy that he’s played with casually for ages, but over the past few months they’ve gotten particularly chummy- ThatzSoKraven. 

His real name is James, and he’s thirty-six like Richie (or as he likes to call it in his stand-up ‘double legal’), and he’s not one of the bro gamers who slings around homophobic slurs like it’s going out of style (it is), or gives the impression that this is his only hobby (he likes to draw, and will occasionally even doodle a comic of shit Richie says). When they’re not trying to break indie games, he’s a night elf hunter. And he’s awesome.

Today they actually play some WoW with the others before bailing. The Love Is In The Air event is on for the holiday, so they complete all the achievements and just generally make a nuisance of themselves to other players, shooting off love rockets and blowing kisses. If there was ever a time to try and suss this guy out, it would be now. SpankTheMunk gifts ThatzSoKraven a Lovely Charm Bracelet to boost his stats, and Richie sends a private chat invite over Vent.

“Hey Kraven, what’s good?”

“Spanky, my man!”

Kraven’s got a great voice. His laugh is silky and soft and his Midwest accent makes Richie miss college, which he thought was straight up impossible. Richie has a 100x100 pixel image of him to go off of, but even if he didn’t, he’d think Kraven was fucking hot.

“You looking at Steam right now?” he asks Richie.

“I will in a minute.” Or maybe not at all if this totally bombs! Richie clears his throat. “Hey- I’m gonna be in your city next month. Uhh, March 20 through the 25th.”

“Oh man! Hang on, let me-” His mic doesn’t pick it up, but Richie can only assume Kraven is shuffling around his desk for a hardcopy of his schedule. That’s encouraging. “Do you have time to hang, or is it for a work thing?”

_Yes!_

“It’s for work, but I’ll be free a lot. I only have shows after seven on Friday and Saturday.”

“Shows?” Kraven asks.

Yeah, that’s the thing. Richie’s always been selective about disclosing his identity online, and Kraven came along after things started really taking off with his career and he fully locked down. He has no idea.

“It’s stand-up? At The Hanger? I... You might have-” What, Richie, what? _You might have heard of me?_ Get the fuck out of here- that’s the hugest most gaping asshole thing to say ever in the history of words. The phrase's hieroglyphic components were cursed by the original evil mummy. “Uhh, I’ve never had to do this step before. Shit, this is weird.”

After he stopped pulling guys at shows, he met them the old fashioned way: through mutual friends or at the chiropractor’s office. Places where you shook hands and introduced yourself within an hour, not like, _three fucking years into knowing each other._

Kraven types something into his computer furiously. Googling, no doubt.

“Ho-lee shit,” he breathes. “Are you Richie Tozier?”

“In the fleshy, fleshy voice chat!”

Kraven laughs that gorgeous slippery laugh. “You won’t believe this- but my girlfriend like, _just_ gave me tickets to your show.”

“That’s wild!” Richie cuts his mic and sighs.

That’s money in his pocket at least?

-2014-

“Can you believe these rubes, with their Hans Zimmer scores?”

Utah isn’t as invested as Richie. He chews on the claws of his back left foot.

“If I ever had to pick music for my program, it’s Vangelis or fuckin’ bust.”

His mother calls and they gossip for a while about Plushenko’s retirement, Dad’s feud with the neighbors who won’t de-ice the sidewalk, and whether or not he's hydrating enough for his head-cold. Before they hang up, she wishes him a happy Valentine’s Day.

Richie blows his nose for the nine thousandth time. “That was today?”

-2015-

There’s nothing good to watch on the plane, and he’s got a five hour flight. This is especially unfortunate because the couple sitting in front of him is on their honeymoon, giving each other surreptitious hand jobs under the blanket. Like, _really?!_ You’re so horned up to fly to Boston and ride a duck boat that you gotta fingerbang each other _dry_? And they’ve got a fucking sixth sense for the approach of the flight attendant. Richie hits his call button twice, for water and for headphones, and each time they conveniently take a break. And what is Richie supposed to say? _Excuse me ma’am, I’m cripplingly lonely so I stare at couples a lot, and I couldn’t help but notice these two twenty year old idiots have it better than me. Me! A man who tells dick jokes other people wrote for a living so that he never rides anything less than Business Class. I demand a compensatory drink, a Zoloft, and a kiss on the forehead from a handsome man who tells me everything’s going to be okay!_

-2016-

“It’s okay, buddy.” Richie squeezes Utah, curled up in his arms.

He never used to let Richie hold him like a baby, but now he doesn’t really have a choice. Richie coaxes Utah to open his little mouth so he can eyedropper in his medicine, then kisses his whiskery head to make up for such an indignity.

“That’s not so bad, right?” He rocks Utah as he carries him back to the living room. “Why don’t we stay in. Just you and me. I’ll bake you a little chicken and we can catch up on some Keanu.”

He hadn’t even wanted a cat. He was burned out from navigating around shitty, inconsiderate roommates, he didn’t want anyone else to have to care about. And that was by design- he _picked_ people to live with that he wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of. He didn’t want to love or lose anymore, because something he couldn’t identify had been scooped out of him already, and he couldn’t bear the idea of being any emptier. And Utah climbed right into his smelly laundry and forced him to anyway.

He cries through all of _John Wick_.

-2017-

He wakes up when Eddie belly-flops on top of him, but all the air would’ve been knocked out of him even if he’d only given Richie a gentle nudge. He’s in _Eddie’s_ bed. Even when they were kids having sleepovers that was a rarity, and now it’s been over a month, night after night. It’s a shock to every system in his body.

“My kidney!” Richie howls.

Eddie chuckles and shifts his weight a little just in case he’s actually hurting him. “Did you have a good nap?”

“Dude, it was _so_ good, I’m gonna think about this nap when I can’t get it up for other, less sexy naps.”

“Good.” Eddie kisses him and then plonks his phone down under Richie’s chin. “Because your mom’s calling.”

“Ahh!”

Richie slaps a hand over Eddie’s to take it and shoves him off. He can’t be like, dick to dick and on the phone with his mother, he has _some_ sense of propriety!

“Hello? Hello?” he answers in his old granny Voice. “Is this about the mailbox I drove over with my Buick? Or did I leave my teeth at the bank again? Oh, I’m sooo forgetful...”

Though she’s heard it all before, Mom still laughs. “Hi, honey.”

“Oh, Maggie, dear!” he coos, before dropping the act. “What’s up?”

“Beats me! You texted me to call _you_.”

Right, right. Fuck. Yeah. He’s got the new show with newly out and proud material coming up later this month, and he wanted to give his parents a heads up. He was supposed to tell them over Christmas while he was in Princeton, but he got kind of sidetracked by nieces and nephews and the family trip to the movies. If he wasn’t going to educate these philistines on the filmography of Donnie Yen, who would?

“Uhm, maybe this isn’t an over the phone thing,” he realizes. “I could come over for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Mom puzzles. “Where are you? I thought you were back in LA.”

“New York.”

“Already, again?”

“Uhm. _Still_ , actually.” After Christmas he took the train from Jersey up to the city to go check out Eddie’s swanky new bachelor pad for New Years and then just... never left! Except for a weekend press thing in Toronto, that he dragged Eddie to. He catches his eye, sitting at the foot of the bed. He gives Richie an encouraging smile. “I’ve been staying with a friend.”

Mom doesn’t sound too put out by that, but still. “I wish I’d known you were so close. I made that ham your father was fantasizing about- we would have had you over.”

“Hah. Yeah, someone’s gotta save you from yourselves and eat a third, huh?”

It was impossible for the Toziers to let a good ham go unfinished. Mom would always try to start packing up leftovers, but it was always _Wait, wait, just one more slice_ , and failed restraint followed by guilty meat sweats. Mom’s ham was _that_ good. Like, don’t get him wrong, boinking Eddie on every single flat surface in his apartment and two semi-public places was mind and dick blowingly fantastic, but this was a ham he would have taken a break for.

“We could do dinner tonight,” Mom says, creaking open the seal of her refrigerator door.

“That’d be great, Ma.” Richie mouths _Dinner_ at Eddie and gets a nod back. “Can I bring someone?”

“Of course, honey.”

“Actually, it’s someone I’d like you guys to meet- well. Actually- you’ve met _before_ actually, so that’ll be nice, but uhm.” Richie swallows thickly. Could he say ‘actually’ a few more fucking times? And is he saving this for later or not? At some point he’s gonna have to start dropping pronouns and he doesn’t want to lie anymore.

“Wow, I can’t remember the last time we met one of your dates, I’ll get Dad to roll out the red carpet!” She pauses to think a moment. “When you were in high school, maybe? Hmm.”

Richie laughs nervously. “That’d be about right...”

“...Someone we’ve met?” she wonders.

That does narrow down the options. He needs to get off the phone before she works this one out.

“Okay well! Better run, then,” Richie chirps. “I’ll text you when we figure out what train we’re coming on- unless you wanna drive?” he directs to Eddie.

He weighs his hands in a shrug and then mimes a drink. Good thinking. It might be nice to forget the car, bring a bottle of wine or two and tie one on with the ‘rents. Mom always liked Eddie- she’ll be happy. And who knows? Maybe this’ll be the night she gets Dancing On The Table Drunk like she’s always teased she would, if and when Richie ‘ever got settled’.

“Well okay, honey,” says his mother brightly. Then more seriously- “I love you, you know.”

“Yeah. I do know.”

-2018-

When they get back to their block after dinner, Eddie lets go of his hand just long enough to check his phone and fire off a short text.

“You texting your other boyfriend?” Richie grins.

He knows Eddie has set _something_ up. Eddie on a normal day was pretty regimented about schedules, but today there's equal emphasis on precisely when they left for their date as for when they returned. Best he can figure is a perishable delivery of some kind. A giant fudgesicle carving of roses or a swan or the Hamburglar. It’s Brooklyn, some hipster weirdo here must make such a thing.

“Hurry up, or he’s gonna start without us,” Eddie rolls his eyes. He tucks his phone back into his pocket, grabs Richie again and picks up the pace. He’s a quick little bastard, so Richie half jogs to keep up.

“I’m starting to think there really is a naked man waiting in our bed,” Richie puffs. “You know, when I said I wanted you and Ben to Eiffel Tower me for my birthday that was a joke-“

“Oh my god. Fuck, I know it was a joke!” Eddie tugs Richie up the stoop to their building’s door.

“Sometimes you don’t laugh and I can’t tell!”

“Because I have to set _standards_.” Eddie laughs now, as musical as the jingle of his keys at the lock. “It _is_ something you asked for for your birthday. I was going to wait, but I started doing research and I got ahead of myself...”

“So now what!?” Richie objects, chasing Eddie through the door and up the interior stairs. “If I get it now, I get stiffed for my birthday next month?!”

“ _Stiffed_ ,” Eddie snickers. “Yes. I promise to stiff you real good.”

Richie catches his arms around Eddie from behind and nuzzles into his ear. “Mmm. Now too, though- right?!”

“I think you might actually be too distracted,” Eddie muses.

A shocking thought. Something capable of distracting Richie from-

He pries Eddie’s keys from his hands before he can open their apartment door himself, and rushes to let them inside. “Oh my god, oh my god, open the door now!”

“Don’t spook her!” says Eddie. He catches the keys that Richie tosses back over his shoulder. “She’s probably already called an Uber to get the hell out of here,” he hisses. “You’re being like a fucking rocket launch right now.”

“Kitty? Meow meow meow?” calls Richie, in a much quieter, but arguably more annoying, cloying voice. “Pspsps!”

Eddie has her set up in the office until she gets a little more settled, so he discovers the little cat tucked under his desk, between a basketball and a pair of Eddie’s running shoes. She doesn’t look anything like Utah, and he wouldn’t want her to- but she’s _perfect_ , all patchy and swirly like a peanut butter hot fudge sundae.

Richie drops to the floor a few feet away and just sits. He pulls out his phone to snap a picture he can post to Instagram. _MEWBORN BABY #shespurrfect #impawssiblycute #moredadjokesincoming_. She bobs her little head and watches him curiously. He pretends not to notice to cultivate an air of mystery.

“Eddie, come here. We have to look available- but not like we’re, like, _desperate_.”

“Just like high school,” Eddie observes. As soon as he sits, Richie pops up again. “Hey! Where are you going, dude? It’s family time!”

Warmth floods Richie’s whole body, and not just because he stood up too quickly. There are lots of F words he loves to do with Eddie, but _Family-_ that’s a new one. “I love you,” he says, dropping a kiss on top of Eddie’s head. “Thankyousomuch,” -another kiss. “I’m grabbing my laptop and some blankets and a can of soup and then hell yeah, we’re doing family time on the floor.”

“Soup?” Eddie calls after him, as Richie whirls out of the room.

“To spill on my pants!”

“What the fuck.”

After a mad dash around the apartment, nearly all the bed and half of the living room throw pillows are constructed into a camp on the office floor. They lounge in the middle, streaming highlights from the Olympics and pigging out on the box of chocolates (no nougat; lots of marshmallow!) that Richie got for Eddie.

“Hate to admit it, but you totally showed me up, Kaspbrak.”

“I know! And I’m not even gonna get laid for my troubles,” Eddie sighs.

Richie snuggles into his side and walks his fingers up Eddie’s chest. “I dunno, Eds. My first cat saw me naked right away and I really think that experience brought us closer together.”

Eddie takes hold of his hand when it reaches his neck to stop it tickling. “I know you’re a freak who’ll get down in front of a bus conductor given the chance, but some of us haven’t ever had an audience before.”

“That you know of,” Richie points out.

“God, that’s disturbing.”

“Look,” Richie laughs. “I only ever took one semester of child psychology five thousand years ago, but I do remember that it’s super beneficial for children to know their parents love and respect each other.”

Eddie giggles. While Richie’s demonstrating some love and respect directly to his face, he catches a glimpse of movement at the edge of the blankets. “Shhrichie. Don’t look now but we’re being investigated.”

Before long, the cat makes her way over the squishy terrain and starts sniffing around their casual-on-purpose hands. She nudges at Eddie first and absolutely melts when he gives her a scratch, flopping into him.

“Oh, she’s a Richie cat,” Richie reasons. “Dubious fashion sense. Instantly in love with you.”

Eddie pulls her up onto his stomach, grinning. “We’re not naming her after you.”

“No? Lil’ Itchy No R?” Richie offers his hand for sniffing. “That’d be a dope rapper name.”

“Itchy was the mouse, the cat was Scratchy.”

“You’ll be shocked to remember I was also there in the Nineties for _The Simpsons_...”

“Ooh! Something Nineties would be cute.”

“ _Blockbuster_ ,” Richie snorts.

Eddie does too. “I know you’re joking but I love it.”

Richie grabs two more chocolates from the box for each of them and crunches one. “Then I’m not joking. Buster for short.” He dangles the other at Eddie’s nose enticingly and he nabs it.

“Thishh,” he munches- “is _exactly_ the amount of effort we should put into naming our children.”

-2019-

Now it’s Richie’s turn to be the handsy honeymooner. Sort of! The wedding isn’t actually until the summer but they had an opportunity to go to Italy when they had an opportunity to go, and that was the place they had talked about going, and it seemed silly to go twice in four fucking months, _so-_ Italy now and a cruise later. As long as Eddie doesn’t get wind of a norovirus outbreak! In which case they’ll go out to Long Island and do a week long beach/wine country tour and get just as drunk and sunstroked.

Anyway, it’s a _Roman Holiday_ complete with dodging mopeds, a sharp haircut for Eddie, and sticking their hands in at Piazza Bocca della Verità. They drown themselves in gelato and snark at cultural relics and wonders, all the live long day. _‘This is u_ ’ Richie snapchats Eddie, every time they cross paths with a nude statue. And the suit shopping. _Holy shit_ , the suit shopping. Richie got an oxblood suit tailor made for him and he can never never never gain or lose a pound because this is the suit he’s gonna wear when he marries Eddie and then maybe every single day until he dies.

Eddie’s not looking too shabby either. When they stop at the hotel to drop off some shopping and recharge their phones and feet for a bit, he takes his own custom suit out of it’s garment bag and models it for Richie.

“I love it when you wear a suit, you look like Dale Cooper,” he admires, loitering behind Eddie in the mirror.

“You look like the Log Lady in that sweater.”

Richie sputters. “It’s Merino wool!”

“I calls it like I sees it,” shrugs Eddie. He puckers his mouth to one side and covers an eye with his hand like an eyepatch. “Blockbuster could be Nadine.”

“We should do this on purpose.”

Eddie turns around and wraps his warm arms around Richie’s waist. The sweater was already cozy on a chilly day, but this is just decadent. “If I’m gonna agree to go to a convention in costume I want something better than ‘a suit’,” he says.

Richie smiles at the idea of a little Eddie Wolverine. Oh, or an Eddie Neo- that’d be so fucking hot that they’d never make it past getting ready in the hotel room. “Who said anything about a convention? I’m talking roleplay,” he oozes, leaning in close to Eddie’s ear. “I’m talking _Twin Peaks_ fetish. Fuck me _stupid,_ Agent Cooper! Flog my log!”

He kisses his neck, and Eddie heaves a full bodied groan in his arms. Before Richie knows it, he’s been whirled around, up against the mirror. He grapples into Eddie’s lapel to tug him close as they kiss. “Hey!” Eddie bites his lip. “Hands off the new merchandise.”

Richie lets go immediately and just wriggles his body between Eddie and the glass, handsfree. He can wait until after the wedding to destroy Eddie’s suit, or at least until he- _gulp-_ takes it off. His very own marble god, heroically nude. There ought to throw up a shrine for him here, somewhere. Eddie blesses him with kiss after kiss as Richie’s fingers squeak against the smooth surface of the mirror. 

“Fuck, Richie.” Eddie palms him through his pants, getting a full appreciation for the effect of his divine presence. He drops to his knees.

“You’re gonna give me a beej in your nice clean suit?”

“No, I’m down here tying your shoelaces together, dumbass.” Eddie grins up at him, already fiddling with Richie’s belt and fly.

“Are you sure? Did they sell comestain insurance at the tailor shop?”

“I’m sure, I’m sure, now gimme that log.”

-2020-  
  


Richie makes matching bowls of cereal and kibble for he and Blockbuster while Eddie scratches away at the kitchen table, filling out a Valentine’s Day card. 

“Left it to the last minute, huh? We’ve been hitched eight months and remembering the holiday's already got you up against the ropes.”

“Fuck off, I threw out the first card because I had a better idea.”

Come to think of it, Richie had seen something pink and red in the garbage when he was trashing the coffee filter. He comes up behind him and tries to snoop over Eddie’s shoulder, but he flaps the card closed and covers it with his arms.

“Fine, be that way!” Richie smirks into Eddie’s hair. He takes a deep breath of it before going to sit with his breakfast.

Eddie cautiously opens the card again. “Does ‘bundling’ have an E in it?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Ah, thanks.”

Richie waves his spoon graciously. “As your personal, fuckable Speak & Spell, it’s my pleasure,” he says. He digs into his cereal. Then he gets curious. Eddie’s still at it. “You writing the great American novel in that card, or what?”

“You’ll see,” Eddie squints at him. He leaves Richie to wonder as he finishes and doesn’t ask for any additional spellings.

“My locker number’s 420,” says Richie, between slurps of milk. “If you wanna slip it in there.”

“Is that somehow a funny number, Richie?” Eddie stares at him, unblinking as he stuffs the envelope. “I hate to be _blunt_ , but I don’t see what’s so funny.”

Richie chokes. “You should open for me.”

“I open you all the time,” Eddie smirks. He sticks out his tongue and then begins to lick the seal, making a real meal of it.

“Mmm Eddie. Stop, you’re making me jealous.”

Eddie works during the day, but nowadays Richie has good reason to take the occasional Friday night off. They meet up in Times Square for dinner and a show ( _Jersey Boys_ , on the condition that Richie keep the Frankie Valli impressions to himself while they’re in any acoustically confined space) and only when they get back home and climb into bed do they remember to exchange actual valentines.

Richie’s to Eddie is the most ostentatiously heterosexual card he could find in the Hallmark aisle, heavily edited with marker and signed FROM RICHARD, YOUR MALE HUSBAND WHO IS A MAN. He’s particularly proud of the little patterned shirt and glasses he scribbled on to all the cartoons, but he has the sneaky feeling Eddie is gonna blow him out of the water, yet again. He slides Eddie’s card out of the envelope, snickers at the _You have a pizza my heart_ picture on the front, and then finally gets a look at his handiwork from this morning. At a glance, it’s familiar. It’s the list, ‘Things I Want You To Know’ that he wrote, ages ago.

“Did you do this from memory?” Richie asks. He feels a little guilty he lost track of that first valentine Eddie gave him, if Eddie has held on to even the memory of his.

“Sort of,” Eddie scratches his chin. “It’s probably not exactly right, especially in the middle. It _was_ thirty fucking years ago, dude.”

It’s never occurred to Richie to ask before. He rolls on to his side and props his head up on one arm. “Wait, you knew it was me?”

“Oh, no! Definitely not. That is one hundred percent a hindsight realization.”

“Hindsight _is_ 2020,” Richie winks.

Eddie shoves Richie flat again and forces out a testy breath. “I can’t believe you’re making me divorce you on fucking Valentine’s Day. _Anyway_ , it didn’t have my name on it, and I had just switched lockers with Chip Derosier. You remember him? That football guy?”

“Oh my god, what a unit,” Richie giggles, seeing where this is going. “Boner City.”

“Exactly! I got like, _six_ valentines for him stuffed in my locker from girls who didn’t know we traded, so I didn’t know if it was even for me, but-”

“But you hoped?” Richie feels vindicated for his thirteen year old self. He opens the card again and reads. “Number one. You are strong and brave and perfect- _Chip Derosier.”_

Eddie chuckles and settles his head on Richie’s shoulder.

“Number two. You don’t have to take shit from anyone-”

“Because you’re already _full_ of it,” Eddie adds. “Owned!”

Richie bites back a smile and reads the rest to himself.

 _3\. Everyday I see you is like an almost snow day.  
_ _4\. I get to be with you and I don’t care if I have to work_ _and_ _shovel.  
_ _5\. You’re worth bundling and showing up for.  
_ _6\. You make everything better even though you are smelly :(_

“Now, wait a minute!” Richie whines. “I’m pretty sure _my_ letter said something about how you smell so nice, that I wish you would cut me a fucking break and change shampoos.”

“That’s the part I definitely couldn’t remember. I improvised.” Eddie gives his chest an apologetic rub. “Keep reading, stinky.”

 _7\. If you let me, I will always take care of you.  
_ _8\. But you can take care of yourself.  
_ _9\. I love you._

“Fucking sappy,” Richie concludes.

“Oh yeah. Like, I hoped it was from you, but I was also embarrassed for you if it was, you fuckin’ drip.”

“That’s legit.” Richie puts the card away along with his glasses and hits the light. "Don't tell the cat, she'll lord it over me."

Eddie kisses him goodnight. "Oh don't you worry, that is just one of the things _I_ will be taking care of personally."

**Author's Note:**

> heeeyyyy, I'm @stitchyarts on tumblr and twitter if you wanna check me out over there :)


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